2014-11-26

The “extraordinary artists” in this exhibition are a “who’s who” of late 19th-century figures who moved art from its traditional academic moorings into the modern era. Many of the DIA’s strongest holdings in works on paper are highlighted, including pastels, etchings, and lithographs. Edgar Degas’ bathers, dancers, and jockeys; Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s portraits of his family and celebrities; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s stage performers; Paul Cézanne’s bathers; and Pierre Bonnard’s and Edouard Vuillard’s intimate interior and city life scenes are among the featured works. Other artists included are Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Mary Cassatt, and Camille Pissarro.

These artists are well known for their colorful landscape paintings but prints and drawings of “ordinary people” in black and white and eventually in color are an equally prominent category of subject matter. In their search for themes from everyday life, they saw beyond villages, fields, and beaches for captivating scenes. Images of friends, family members, and folks in a variety of familiar poses— at ease, at play, in contemplation perhaps making art, reading, writing, or sewing— form a rich and interesting aspect of their scenes.Anonymous crowds enjoying public parks, taverns, cafés, theaters, and race tracks populate their views. By shunning topics based on grand historical, religious, or literary themes, these artists bucked the expected order of the art academies. Their sketchy styles which emphasized free brushwork in painting and broken, choppy lines in drawing and printmaking were considered inadequate for finished work ready for exhibition. The odd spatial settings, atypical perspectives, and emphasis on capturing fleeting moments of time and light were also once judged unacceptable.

When the label of “Impressionism” was first hung on Degas, Renoir and their colleagues in the 1870s, it was meant derisively. By the 1890s, it was the new normal and most progressive manner in which to create sparking a legacy that lasted for decades. What began as a break-away from the establishment by a group of young, relatively unknown and radical artists became one of the most influential art phenomenon in history. From ordinary, everyday aspirations of wanting nothing more than pursuing wider avenues for exhibiting their work, promoting their message and increasing their sales, these artists liberalized practices and attitudes toward art in an almost unprecedented manner.

Their popularity and fame only continue to increase.

This exhibition is organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts. Support has been provided by the DIA’s Woman’s Committee.

2014-11-19

Hiro Sakaguchi's vibrant and complex paintings, drawings, sculpture, and videos reflect issues of environment, ecology, science, world history, peace, conflict, and popular culture. Sakaguchi describes how, "Models, toys, and games from childhood often appear in my works. They emerge out of my memory of this time in my life and give me the initial inspiration to make something. I would like to explore now what wasn't possible for me then. This innocent point of departure lets me get at the heart of more current topics and adult concerns of the greater populace."

Maiza Hixson, the DCCA's Gretchen Hupfel Curator of Contemporary Art and Acting Associate Director for Programs, explains that the title of Sakaguchi's exhibition references the artist's interest in Hollywood disaster films in which a protagonist must "avert, escape, or cope with" the calamity presented. Images of war, fire, volcanoes, hurricanes, vortexes, and explosions pervade his artworks, reflecting his association with images from the web and television broadcasting of recent natural and human-made disasters. In the painting Gazing Fire, houses, detached propellers, spacecraft, and other debris form the backdrop to a central blaze or bonfire that dominates the canvas. A discarded teddy bear appears off to the side, signifying childhood play interrupted by harmful natural forces.

According to Hixson, the theme of heat also surfaces in Sakaguchi's sculpture. Boat with Hibachi Engine features a copper stove installed in a miniature wooden vessel. Hibachi translates to "fire bowl" in Japanese; in North America, the term "hibachi" refers to a small cooking stove heated by charcoal or an iron hot plate. The combination of the Hibachi grill and Budweiser cans that litter the hull allude to the artist's Japanese heritage informed by several years of living in America and, by extension, its consumer culture.

The artist's Spool Tanks installation features enlarged versions of a familiar children's toy as ersatz battleships. In his video Unmanned Ground Vehicle, spool tanks appear in miniature. Continuing the play army and gender wars motifs, Sakaguchi and his collaborator and wife, artist Anne Canfield, perform in the video wearing blue and pink camouflage. The two sit across from each other rolling a tank at one another. The video cuts to an oversized version of the self-propelled spool tank set in motion. Wearing arm badges with symbols of peace and love, Sakaguchi and Canfield place flowers in the barrel of the spool tank gun, salute the camera, and march off the set.

Sakaguchi was born in Nagano, Japan and grew up in Chiba City, near Tokyo. He moved to the United States in the 1990s to study art at the University of the Arts (BFA) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (MFA). He has had over 40 solo and group exhibitions at various venues, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Secession Museum in Austria, the Mori Museum in Tokyo, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki.

Sakaguchi has also exhibited at the PULSE Contemporary Art Fair in Miami and the Melbourne Art Fair in Australia, both with Tokyo's Mizuma Art Gallery. He is represented by Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia and Galerie Heubner & Heubner in Frankfurt. Artworks by Sakaguchi can be found in both public and private collections internationally, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Woodmere Art Museum.

2014-11-12

Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist presents a full-scale survey of one the most important artists of the Harlem Renaissance, featuring the painter's visual examination of African American culture during the Jazz Age. The exhibition covers Motley's entire career, including periods in Chicago, Paris, and Mexico. Motley received his formal training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and went on to create strong and somewhat solemn portraits of his community, as well as vividly hued, lively scenes of crowded dancehalls that reflect the colorful spirit of the Harlem Renaissance. The exhibition features a number of paintings depicting the black communities of Chicago and Paris just before and after the Great Depression, and concludes with introspective moments of quotidian life in Mexico, made during the artist's travels during the 1950s

A completely new exhibition in the textile art galleries features more than 20 quilts arranged in nine thematic groupings. Each section invites viewers to look closely at the different themes and variations. Visitors can discover common roots for motifs and patterns and creative differences in materials and techniques. More than half of the objects are recent acquisitions on view for the first time, while others, including The Matterhorn quilt (pictured below), are well-known treasures of the collection. Complementing the exhibition is Contemporary Takes on Traditional Patterns by 10 artists from Studio Art Quilts Associates whose quilts illustrate how traditions continue, evolve, and inspire.

While the overall graphic impact of each quilt is evident on first glance and even from a distance, a longer, closer, second look reveals details that provide insights about subtle creative choices in materials, construction, and ultimately, artistic concepts.

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